A New Favorite! Zondle!!

Zondle is a website developed for teachers to create games to use with their students. The wonderful part is YOU create the questions and the site plugs them into any game. There are at least 100 different games to choose from! There is also a way to play in teams. You can put the kids in teams and take them to the lab. The site will give you a site name, session code, and password that the students need to type in. Once they type them in, their computer will serve as a remote. They will be able to punch in their answers to the questions you have already plugged into the game. All you need to do is register. The site is FREE!

There is even a way to plug in your student's names and track their progress. I know you are busy, but if you get a chance, go to the website and play around. It is AWESOME!

The Mini Page Archive

On Mondays The News and Observer prints a "mini page" for kids in their newspaper. They are great for teaching non-fiction text and they will show up nicely on your SMART Board or projector.

Here is the link to those archived pages:

http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/minipage/

Come to the Technology Showcase!

If you get a chance, come by the Technology Showcase. Every school will have a booth and will be showing the fantastic things they are doing with technology! It is a great place to get new ideas. They also have candy so if you bring your kids, they can fill up their bags and you can fill up yours too! :-)

 

October 30, 2012

4-6 PM 

Great Hall and Former Media Center of JCC

FireFox vs. Internet Explorer

Which should you use? 

Internet Explorer

-NCWise

FireFox

-School Center

-Google Mail

-Google Docs

-Google Calendar

County technology Trainings

The technology leaders in the county are continuing to offer trainings throughout the year. Look on mylearningplan.com to see the different offerings they have. A couple they are having soon are GoogleDocs November 29 and Advanced Google on December 6.

Elementary iPad Apps (K-3)

MClass teachers, the tech leaders in the county wanted to remind you that you have access to training materials at the following: http://bit.ly/jcsipad.  There is a link to some additional resources including a page call TCEA it is a great list of apps - the free apps are in the shaded cells. The apps are divided into categories at the top of the chart.

Every Kid Votes

Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Whittington have found an awesome site to teach students about the upcoming election. Go to http://www.studiesweekly.com/vote/ and check out the amazing information it provides.

When you get to the homepage, you will see 4 major links that you can click. If you click on Learn about the Candidates, it shows both candidates side by side. It gives a biography and also gives tabs you can click that tell about their positions on certain topics like the economy, energy, and education! The best thing is the information is in 2 columns so you see both at the same time and can easily compare the two.

Back on the homepage, another informative tab is Election Curriculum. From this link you will select your grade level range. Once you have selected your grade level range it will take you to a magazine that you can show your kids on your projector or your SMART Board.To make it larger just click on the button that looks like TV.

This site will also allow our school to vote. On October 30th, we will have a mock election. The students will be able to vote on the computers in your classrooms. On the morning of October 30, we just need you to log-in on a student computer in your room, go to http://www.studiesweekly.com/vote/, click on vote and type in this code: MMHB5RJ7 (not case sensitive). The students will go to the computer and place their vote. We will give you I Voted stickers that you can give them once they have voted. We will be able to see the data as it is collected, and at the end of the day we will have a final count. If you have any questions please let me or Amanda know!

Adding PTA as a link on School Center

PTA requested that all teachers add their website as a direct link from your classroom website. Here are the steps to get that accomplished.

1. Click Edit
2. Click Edit Navigation
3. Under Custom Items on the bottom left side drag "Custom Link" to your navigation links which is under the heading "Left" or "Top" wherever you navigation on your website is located.
4. Once you drag it, it should still be blue. At the top it will say link title______ URL ______ for link title type in PTA and for URL copy and paste this http://www.johnston.k12.nc.us/ecespta
5. Click done

Once you have completed these steps you should see PTA as a link on your navigation.

If you need help with this please let me know and I can come show you how to do it!

Read Every Day

Throughout the year, Scholastic will do webcasts. They are live interviews with authors. Last year, my students watched one with many of the 39 Clues authors. They enjoy them because they are live and they give you a chance to type in questions. Here is one the Johnston County tech leaders shared with us!

"Do you have any Taylor Swift fans in your school?  English Language Arts classrooms can tune in to a webcast to get Swift's perspective on how literature has affected her song writing: scholastic.com/readeveryday.  Check it out and forward to those who might be interested.  (Recommended for grades 3 and up.)"

Labs

Outside of the labs are now calendars for you to sign up to bring your classes. Regular scheduled classes have already been written in. Please make sure to sign up before you bring your class. Also, if you have signed up, but decided that you won't be using the lab that day, make sure to erase your name so other people will be able to use it during that time.

Please help me out by making sure the students have left the lab neat before they leave. Have them use this check list:

1. Headphones put neatly under the monitor on top of the CPU.
2. Cords and keyboard fixed neatly.
3. All paper and pencils taken with you.
4. Chairs pushed under.

Thank you for your help with this!!

School Center Updates

Please make sure you have deleted all pages on your site that are blank or outdated. If you need help with this, let me know!

We are hoping that each teacher will have a minimum of the following things on their webpage:

• weekly content focus
• contact form
• daily schedule
• enhancement schedule

If you are curious about how much your site is being visited, go to page settings and click "show hit counter." You can also view reports under "admin." This will show you a break down of how much your site was visited each month.

If you need help updating your page and don't want to wait until the SchoolCenter training, please let me know!

Parent Information

*  Remember that we should not be giving out parent email addresses and phone numbers to other parents in the classroom. April Taylor had a great idea of using signupgenius.com. It is free! Click on the picture below and it will take you to the site.

*  When emailing all the parents in your classroom, put your name in the "to" box, click "add bcc:" then put in all your parent's email addresses. This way they will only be able to see your email address and not the email addresses of the rest of the parents in your classroom.

Free Technology for Teachers

The technology teacher, Ellen Hughes, at West Clayton showed me this site. It is WONDERFUL! He has tons of free websites that you can use with your students. Here is an example of one of the sites he spotlighted on his blog. Picture Book Maker - Create Children's Stories , (http://www.culturestreet.org.uk/activities/picturebookmaker/ )

Click this link to go directly to his blog.  Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Bryne

MAP Support

Amy Stanley sent us a link for MAP support. She said the site might be useful when looking at your data. The Community is called the Spark Community and here is the link: http://community.nwea.org/ there are blogs and forums with tips and information for the MAP and the Common Core.